WAMC, 3.98 GPA, 519 MCAT

[Kamui99]

1. cGPA and sGPA as calculated by AMCAS or AACOMAS
cGPA: 3.989 sGPA: 4.0

2. MCAT score(s) and breakdown
519 128/129/131/131

3. State of residence or country of citizenship (if non-US)
OH

4. Ethnicity and/or race
White

5. Undergraduate institution or category
Private Top-20

6. Clinical experience (volunteer and non-volunteer)
100 Hours hospital volunteer: Talk and play games with patients in their room, wheel them down for rehab therapy, help with certain exercises, help catalogue wheelchair checkout.
25 hours First-Aid Volunteer: Acting first-aid for crowds at collegiate sporting events, BLS certified, volunteer at 5ks and longer runs.

7. Research experience and productivity
~180 hours in psych lab. No pubs, scale created for measuring specific trait
~ 60 hours in a bio research lab during summer while working full-time seasonally
~ Looking to do economics research senior year

8. Shadowing experience and specialties represented
Very little. 2 hours of virtual shadowing in ortho, but in the process of getting an in-person gig set up. Likely will be at 30 once I apply.

9. Non-clinical volunteering
~ 500 hours in special olympics as a volunteer coach
~ 50 hours preparing the church for mass at my local church

10. Other extracurricular activities (including athletics, military service, gap year activities, leadership, teaching, etc)
- Competitive and performance Jumprope
- Intramural sports
- Resident Assistant
- Organic Chemistry TA
- Economics Grader


11. Relevant honors or awards
- Nu Rho Psi member
- Dean's List

Last Piece: I know my research is lacking for the top-20's but it is truly something I enjoy, I just had the wrong impression on how much it mattered during undergrad. I spent a lot of my time in other avenues. Hoping other aspects and writing can overcome this.


Schools:
Ohio State
Cincinnati
Wright State
Case Western
Vanderbilt
Northwestern
Georgetown
UVA
Michigan
Yale
Cornell
Dartmouth
Harvard
Penn
Indiana
Pitt
Emory
Loyola

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[chilly_md]

It’s your low clinical hours and lack of any shadowing that will lead to you getting screened out. First aid volunteer does not actually involve patients who are sick.

If you are not able to gain 100 more hours at the hospital and 50 hours of in-person shadowing, you will have to wait a cycle.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

I agree you should wait a cycle to boost your clinical hours above 150 hours total, including some primary care exposure. You should also boost your community service. I will give you some credit if you are a coach for Special Olympics, but take on a true community service role with food distribution, shelter work, job placement services, transportation services, or housing rehabilitation. At least 150 hours outside of Special Olympics.

Where your hours are signal where your passion/priority lies. You can't write your way out of how you spent your time. Like putting lipstick on a pig. (I think that's the proper idiom.)

 

[Faha]

With your low clinical volunteering and shadowing hours you are unlikely to receive interview at most of the schools on your list. The only realistic schools would be Wright State, NEOMED and Toledo.You would be better off to wait a year and accumulate 50 hours of in person physician shadowing and another 200+ hours of clinical volunteering with patient contact.Let us know when you plan to apply so we can suggest schools based on your ECs at that time.

 

[theoceanman]

25 hours First-Aid Volunteer: Acting first-aid for crowds at collegiate sporting events, BLS certified, volunteer at 5ks and longer runs.

Very little. 2 hours of virtual shadowing in ortho, but in the process of getting an in-person gig set up. Likely will be at 30 once I apply.

~ 50 hours preparing the church for mass at my local church

Last Piece: I know my research is lacking for the top-20's but it is truly something I enjoy, I just had the wrong impression on how much it mattered during undergrad. Hoping other aspects and writing can overcome this.

I highlighted some sentences in your post by showcasing what you're clearly missing. First, you have great numbers, but that doesn't mean anything to your school list. You probably will get screened out, considering you have two hours of virtual shadowing currently and want to pursue medicine; from your application as of now, it looks like you have drawbacks in a variety of your EC's.

Your shadowing hours are practically nonexistent, virtual shadowing doesn't mean much anymore now that it's not lockdown in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. You should aim to get 150 hours at least in shadowing, with 100 hours in primary care such as FM/IM/Pediatrics. 100 hours of hospital volunteering is fine, but your first-aid volunteering doesn't count for anything but just plain volunteering because clinical means there's some sort of patient involved. Even 100 hours would be lacking compared to your school list as well so get more clinical experiences that serve populations that you want to serve as a physician in the future. Your research is not the area that you should be focusing on.

Your non-clinical hours are fine, but you lack community service completely. What population do you want to serve in the future? Is it rural, underserved, or urban? How did you show that? These are questions you should be able to answer through the community service you did, as engaging with your community is the best way to learn about the issues that these populations are facing. By targeting specific populations you want to serve through community service, it allows you to grasp a better understanding of your own mission-fit and how it matches the schools you apply to in the future. Your church hours are vague and is your church in a location that does service for specific populations or members of your community? This may allow you develop a better mission-fit as you do more community service.

I may sound a bit harsh in my over-analysis of your application, but I don't think T20's or even any medical school is a realistic option yet until you improve your shadowing experiences and community service experiences, and it's a bit difficult for me to fathom why you chose medicine at all. Your writing and other spaced out EC's cannot overcome your current shortcomings at all since we're not talking about an institutional action or some mess-up one semester GPA-wise: the current application you have shows almost no passion for medicine and only shows that you can academically succeed in medical school, which is practically every other applicant. As Mr.Smile12 and Faha above has stated, we can't see your passion for medicine as of currently. You should take a gap year and improve upon your service.

 

[Kamui99]

Thanks to everyone who took the time to respond. I certainly believe you guys have a better idea of what you need for med school, but I find it quite sad that working with those with developmental and intellectual disabilities wouldn't be considered community service. It isn't hard to see how this group in society has been marginalized. So for this to be scoffed at is a bit unfortunate. I agree the suggested activities would be good for gaining more community service. Yet having the chance to directly touch the life of someone who has been often left out and help them to find their passion seems more human and pure to me.

 

[chilly_md]

I personally consider it community service that definitely gets you away from an academic setting, and thus my post said that it is the clinical aspect of the app (shadowing and patient-facing hours in a hospital setting) where you are lacking.

 

[theoceanman]

Thanks to everyone who took the time to respond. I certainly believe you guys have a better idea of what you need for med school, but I find it quite sad that working with those with developmental and intellectual disabilities wouldn't be considered community service. It isn't hard to see how this group in society has been marginalized. So for this to be scoffed at is a bit unfortunate. I agree the suggested activities would be good for gaining more community service. Yet having the chance to directly touch the life of someone who has been often left out and help them to find their passion seems more human and pure to me.

Community service places emphasis on community-based services, such as Salvation Army or oftentimes Food Banks. This experience may be considered just “non-clinical volunteering” by medical schools.

Your experiences with this population aren’t being scoffed at, we are just saying that you need community service to back up your mission-fit if this specific population of individuals are the group of people you want to serve as a physician. It’s amazing you found your passion here, but more is needed to showcase this passion to the admissions committee as words alone are simply not enough, especially with a lack of community service dedicated to this group of individuals. Perhaps you can find community service opportunities to serve those who are underserved with developmental and intellectual disabilities; that will greatly further your application and what your mission-fit is.

 

[Kamui99]

Thank you guys for the feedback, I just wanted to clarify that point. Clinical experience is certainly where I'm lacking I agree, I'll be working on that. It's unfortunate that the rule of thumb is to talk only about college EC's. I've really been doing special olympics since the beginning of high school with a lot more hours. Additionally I did a summer program at a hospital in my local city where I got to do a lot of shadowing along with disease research which really is what started my road towards medicine.

I'll certainly be back for feedback in the future, I wish you all the best going forward 🙂

 

[chilly_md]

Thank you guys for the feedback, I just wanted to clarify that point. Clinical experience is certainly where I'm lacking I agree, I'll be working on that. It's unfortunate that the rule of thumb is to talk only about college EC's. I've really been doing special olympics since the beginning of high school with a lot more hours. Additionally I did a summer program at a hospital in my local city where I got to do a lot of shadowing along with disease research which really is what started my road towards medicine.

I'll certainly be back for feedback in the future, I wish you all the best going forward 🙂

Since you continued the activity through college, you may include high school hours for helping with the Special Olympics.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

I find it quite sad that working with those with developmental and intellectual disabilities wouldn't be considered community service

It is awesome that you do this, but understand that you cannot hang your hat just on this. You probably gained a lot about empathy, communication, and coaching. You may have learned a lot about discrimination they experience in society and perhaps by other health care providers. This is something anyone who wants to become a physical therapist, athletic trainer, or disability advocate would show as a passion to helping others.

Does this tie in with housing services for similarly challenged individuals? How about job placement services with resumes, interviews, clothes? Is this part of a great narrative showing your passion for this community? If so, maybe you can sway the screeners to appeal to more screeners off our rubrics. But we are here to give you the truth of the process, not to butter you up falsely. You have worked too hard to just get ego stroking if there is something that could be a concern.